Fire and Ice
by Virodeil
Summary: *Caught Is Caught Is Cuddled Series* – The Warriors Three accidentally offended a very, very important person on Musplheim, the realm of the so-called fire demons. Thor entreated his diplomat of a little brother to solve the problem discreetly, without involving Odin in it. And, the dutiful if grumpy brother that he is, Loki goes. There, he finds….


Fire and Ice  
By Rey

The Warriors Three accidentally offended a very, very important person on Musplheim, the realm of the so-called fire demons. Thor entreated his diplomat of a little brother to solve the problem discreetly, without involving Odin in it. And, the dutiful if grumpy brother that he is, Loki goes. There, he finds….

Story note: Loki is 700 years old, in this story. Maturity-wise, he is comparable to a 10-year-old medieval working-class human for an ás or in the æsir's standard; but for a jötun or in the jötnar's standard, he is comparable to a 7-year-old modern human living a pampered life in a big city.

Author's note: Truly "fresh from the oven," folks. So please pardon me for any disjointment and other mistakes and please, please, please point them to me, so I can fix them. Especially in the latter part of the story, which I added on just tonight.

Started on: 1st November 2019 at 00:17 AM

Finished on: 9th March 2020 at 00:18 AM

"Thor had better be _truly_ grateful," Loki grouses as he steps foot on Musplheim's _hot, hot, hot_ soil.

"And be prepared with _many_ favours for me," he adds when his whole body catches up in discomfort with his booted feet. It feels like his blood is being boiled, and his lungs and throat and nose being pumpd with soot-tinged hot air, and his eyeballs being both swollen to twice their usual size and _pickled_. The view that greets his watering sight is equally unappealing: gleaming, glowing red, orange and yellow _everywhere_, interspersed with just a few strains of brown and black. And he can even see _simmering white_ that quails him viscerally at a distance ahead.

"Oh, damn. If I am meant to go there, I shall find _any other way_ to complete this stupid mission."

Even now, even as he forces himself to take one step ahead of the other away from the Pathway and his salvation, he is beginning to _heavily_ regret agreeing to Thor's pleas and cajoling for him to smooth over the Warriors Three's transgression against Logi, _the_ heir to the throne of Musplheim. Going behind Father's back, at that, and without knowing the details of the said transgression. Only that there has been one, and it involves _each_ of the warriors insulting Crown Prince Logi, and it occurred just yesterday.

And he has just found out that, here, in the realm of hot, melting, melted, fiery, steamy, ever-shifting, ever-erupting land masses, his seiðr works _against him_. It is too busy keeping him alive and safe to give him any directional reading to reach Crown Prince Logi.

Even now that his _combined_ seiðr and mundane awareness is at its peak, it barely gives him any warning before _the path that he has just trodden on_ erupts in fume and liquid fire.

`_Damn you, Thor!_` the hapless would-be diplomat rails, even as he involuntarily lets out a yelp and rushes onward, more recklessly than he would otherwise. `_Damn me for falling to your pleas and bribes, too!_`

And then, quite alarmingly and embarrassingly, with how he does not – _cannot_ – really watch where he is going, he crashes against something… solid, but soft, but… `_Hot hot hot hot hot!_`

He leaps away by reflex, gasping, wide-eyed.

And then he sees that, before him, nearly twice larger than he is both up and to the side, stands one of the fire demons, in a semi-solid form that looks like freshly flowing lava drawn by seiðr into the vague form of an ás, complete with the bright rangy-red hue and the intense heat.

And, when the liquid lava made into a person talks, he realises – with mortified embarrassment – that it is in fact _Crown Prince Logi_, as he heard the voice before in preparation for this trip, stored in a memory crystal in the Hall of Records.

Worse, although the question is a simple demand for his identity, Loki cannot say or do anything to comply with it, it turns out, let alone starting to bargain for the Warriors Three. He is too busy _trying_ to stabilise his own seiðr and body after the scare and the unprepared contact.

And worst, just as he manages to wrestle his composure into some semblance of respectability, he finds that Crown Prince Logi has _shrunk into a short, non-quite-heat-exuding, solid ás-like form_ and _created a stable area under and around them_. He knows the kindness for it is; but still, it _stings_. `_I am not a little child to be coddled so!_`

He does his best in rectifying his childish faux pas, therefore, by greeting the foreign royalty in the Muspl tongue. He will show the Crown Prince that he is _capable_ of representing Asgard at large and the Warriors Three in specific.

Well, unfortunately, a gout of liquid fire chooses the same time to erupt _all round and under the platform_, going as far as lifting it up for at least the length of his body before sinking it half _into_ the volatile ground.

Loki flinches, squeaks, and _once more_ scrambles to wrestle his wayward seiðr and posture back into some semblance of control, _in the middle of his greeting_.

And then, _kindly_, Crown Prince Logi points out that the greeting is actually a blessing for more fire in the home-hearth of the home that one visits; a gift of seiðr _for more fire_, a courtesy when a muspl visits another muspl's home. It is not simply a collection of half-meaningless words spoken only by norm and custom.

Another faux pas, while the previous one has not been rectified yet.

The flush that decorates Loki's face now is comparable to the heat and colour of the fire, it feels.

The self-generated overdose of high temperature intensifies when, just as kindly _and even solicitously_, Crown Prince Logi offers to _escort him home_ and talk there, as though he were a child newly venturing into the world outside of his home and being overwhelmed by it.

Aside from the heightening embarrassment, now Loki is also put into a dilemma: To reject the care would be an insult to Crown Prince Logi, even when the rejecter is a prince himself, since the muspl so rarely leave their fire-wreathed world, and Asgard needs no more insults heaped on this personage by its citizens. However, to accept the offer would mean a far greater chance of Father finding out what Thor and the latter's friends so desperately wish to conceal, and, forget the bribes and favours that now no longer seem so good to cash in, it would only lead to a long, long, long time of unpleasantness for Loki himself.

"Mayhaps your highness could spare some time to converse in a more neutral setting?" The second prince of Asgard offers a third option, with fervent hope that his would-be rescuer will not be offended by the rather obvious redirection.

And then, before the Crown Prince can reply either way, the beleaguered self-invited guest notices the native's new attire: a thick, graceful, well-insulated winter outfit.

_Winter outfit_, in a land of _molten fire_.

A patch of whites and blues and greys and a smidge of green, amidst the landscape of reds and oranges and browns and yellows and a streak of white.

An outfit meant to _Trap and store and recycle heat_ while the temperature is so _overflowing_ with it.

It is like… a fish swimming in a tank of water, which is in turn submerged in a lake full of swimmable, liveable water.

Loki's mind stalls, _again_.

And, before he can recover much of his scattered wits, he finds himself being guided through the mouth of the path that he came out from.

Only, as he discovers next, their destination is not actually the small hot-spring cave just outside of Gladsheim proper, from which point he departed, but instead a forest of dark, gigantic, frost-layered trees with knobbly and crisscrossing roots.

He inhales sharply in shock.

And an alien _but so familiar_ amalgamation of scents floods his nose, his throat, his lungs. It jars what feels like a dusty, dusty memory loose from the depths of the past.

He was _here_, once, somehow, wherever "here" is, before he ever began actively recollecting moments in his life. Because he _knows_, _instinctively_, that, if there were not so many trees around, he could be _home_ already.

`_But there is __**no winter**__ anywhere in Asgard!_`

He takes a second deep inhale, to confirm for himself and – _hopefully_ – dispell the ridiculous notion.

Well, and to comfort himself as well, he has to admit, even just to himself. Because, _indeed_, the deep, sharp smell of winter here, with just a little bite to make it even more real, is somehow _comforting_.

He remembers hunger. He remembers loneliness. He remembers uncomfortable dryness, of all things. But he also remembers a huge hand laid on his entire and entirely bare front, intimately familiar and familially intimate.

And, on the third deep inhale, as he sinks further into the vague recollection, he remembers a deep, rumbly voice telling him a name, in a stuttering, pained wheeze: Loptr.

`_My name? But I am __**Loki**__! … Am I not?_`

A part of him wishes otherwise, still. The voice may sound male, but the visceral imprint that it leaves in him is…. `_If I remembered Mother being pregnant with me, I'd wager that it would feel practically the same as this one does. – But __**how**__ could it be? This does not make sense __**at all**__!_`

He wishes that he could feel mortified, when he blinks back into the present awareness and finds the thickly gloved fingers of _Crown Prince Logi_ swiping gently on his cheeks, one after the other, right under their eyes, and coming away wet. But all that he can feel presently is a deep, deep ache in his chest and behind his eyes, as well as a sudden, fierce, wild longing that exhausts him as much as it confuses him.

And then, as their eyes meet, the Crown Prince smiles softly and murmurs, "You are back home, child. Do not be afraid. Now, who are you called and where do you live? I shall return you to your mother or clan presently. They must be so worried."

The smile turns more _teasing_, then, and the muspl adds, "Be welcome in my home-planet, when you are older and well-travelled, or accompanied by a capable elder. I would like to see you and show you around, in that far happier and easier time. But for now, please do not use it as the object of your wager or a hideout for when you feel stroppy with somebody. It was not worth the hassle, was it?"

To that, Loki opens his mouth, then closes it, then opens it again, and ends up gaping most indecorously for a while.

"I… I am Loki," he says at last. But his mind shrieks, `_Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!_` to his further inner bafflement.

And the Crown Prince _bops the tip of his nose chidingly_, as though they noticed the supposedly incorrect answer.

Well, and as though Loki were a little child indeed, but the Asgardian youth cannot care less about it right now.

And then, suddenly and silently, somebody – _a gigantic, greyish-blue-skinned, silvery-marked somebody_ – materialises behind the Crown Prince, mostly obscured by the surrounding colours and gloom.

And the longing, flaming as wildly and fiercely and unpredictably as the fires of Musplheim, turns _even stronger_.

"Ah, your transport home has arrived," the helpless ás hears, as if from afar. "Now, your monarch has spared some time to bring you home, so please tell them your name and where you live, would you?"

And, drunk and burnt by the longing in equal measure, Loki finds himself croaking out the name that spurred it all: "Loptr."

_And_, almost like the memory, a huge hand is laid on his front, mostly on his chest, and a soft, strangled, pained whisper fills both his ears and his mind, riding on a wave of the same power that drenches him thoroughly, as in his babyhood recollection: "Loptr, Laufey-childe."

The huge, strong arms that next gathers his quivering body close are almost _expected_.

Viscerally so.

`_Mother,_` his heart cries, and his dazed mind cannot contradict it.

Whoever he is, whatever he is, he is home, _with his mother_.


End file.
